Thursday 25th November 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

Re: ONLINE SAFETY POST – NETFLIX TV SERIES ‘SQUID GAME’

Recently, there have been a number of children in Year 2 discussing a Netflix TV series called ‘Squid Game’. This series has a rating of 15+ as the visual content includes high levels of gore, death, violence and physical assault. This material is not appropriate for primary aged children and they should not be exposed to the graphic content.

Even if children do not have access to Netflix, the show is also being viewed via other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, and given the popularity of the games in the show, developers have made various mini-games based on Squid Game on Roblox and other gaming platforms.

It is important that you monitor what your children might have access to on TV, as well as what they are viewing online, especially on mobile phones. This is always good practice and helps keep your children safe whilst online. If you see your child replicating the challenges from the show or hear them talking about scenes and characters from Squid Game, it would be a timely opportunity to discuss with them that the programme is not intended for children, that much of the content would be inappropriate for their age, and that the violence in the series is very realistic and often upsetting. We are currently teaching online safety in our computing lessons and will briefly cover age appropriate content with the children.

Please make sure that you set your profiles on Netflix to age-restrict content. You can find a parental guide to Netflix here: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/264

You can also find information about how to set parental controls on mobile devices, search engines, social media and gaming consoles here: https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Year 2 team